The Key to Being Amy Sedaris Is in the Details
A mahogany table sits at the center of the room where Amy Sedaris is meeting press. On top of the table, dead butterflies are affixed to a piece of driftwood. They’re beautiful and haunting and kept under the protection of a glass globe in case they happen to reanimate and take flight. Intended or not, she’s positioned herself in a place where she can keep an eye on them, because Amy Sedaris keeps an eye on everything. She is, in a sense, the purveyor of all things peculiar.
She happens to be wearing the same witch boots she was wearing the day that we first met on the set of her show At Home with Amy Sedaris. The particular episode she was shooting that day was all about entertaining during Halloween. In the opening scene, she has to cross through a graveyard and do a dance with skeletons that have emerged from their graves. (It’s casual.) Between takes, Dwanye, a 6'3' skeleton, takes notes from the episode’s director and writer, Paul Dinello. But they’re interrupted by Sedaris, who is gesturing to her full witch’s outfit. “This is all mine,” she says. “From my wardrobe.” She wasn’t lying.
Ultimately, the boots are just a nod to what Sedaris does best: details. When you create a world with so much insanity and so many characters, everything has to be meticulous. Without the details, in her opinion, the rest doesn’t matter. “Justin Theroux said to me, ‘Amy, you know, you really shouldn’t worry about all that stuff. It takes away from the acting,’” she says, “and I’m like, ‘Oh no. I need that distraction. Where’s the pie plate that was up there two days ago?’”
As her variety show heads into its second season, her ideas have evolved into something further reaching than the critically acclaimed Season One. This season has more Patty Hogg and a whole episode that feels as close to Strangers with Candy as anything she’s done since the show’s cancellation in 2000, and she's reevaluating every decision, even after the fact. "Patty’s heavy this season, and I’m a little worried about that. I wonder if it’s too much," she says, pausing to see if I agree with her.
Whether you love Patty or Chassie or The Lady Who Lives in the Woods, the series stays its course, with Paul Dinello at the helm of the writers’ room. The writing team, which features much more of Season One player Cole Escola this season, remains small, but that’s a necessity when a vision is as particular as Sedaris’s. “I always refer to it like the bottom of the I Dream of Genie bottle,” Sedaris says. “Like she would go into that bottle, and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I want to be in that bottle.’”
The series is a caricatured callback to the strange world of Lawrence Welk and Red Skelton, with a dash of a deranged Martha Stewart. But there's still something so intrinsically Amy Sedaris about it all. Though there's slightly less crafting this season and a bit more narrative, Sedaris's special touch is still as evident as always; it's practically habitual. Even as we speak, she explains the whole process of what I can do if I want to make my own hair sample lamp, down to the process of steaming it when it inevitably gets tangled and curled up. Even after the cameras stop rolling, she explains how to make your life a little more deliberate and custom-made. "It’s cheating if you go to Michael’s and add something to it," she adds.
Perhaps it's that commitment to form that draws in some of her biggest guest stars. Season Two will feature Michael Shannon (again), Ann Dowd, Ana Gasteyer, and Billy Crudop. "I didn’t think anyone would want to do the show," Sedaris says, humbly, before elaborating on the series' growing rolodex of talent. When asked what she thinks the draw is, she smiles and very matter of factly states, "The 700 dollars."
With the possibility of a Season Three, she already has her eye on some potential new guests. "I miss [David Letterman] a lot," she says. "He’d be fun to get on the show-[to play] a local pedophile or something." For now, she's simply waiting (anxiously) to make sure that Season Two resonates in the same way that the first Emmy-nominated season did. This has, after all, been a long time in the making. Dinello, who has been a long-time writing partner, helped orchestrate the thoughtfully manic mad house that is At Home with Amy Sedaris after years of conceptualization.
"[It's been in the works for] like 15, 18 years or something? I think people my age grew up with those homemaking shows so they can relate to it a little bit," Sedaris says. "Everyone likes to watch people make stuff, I would think. Why is it relevant? I don’t know." For every compliment she gives herself, she steps back and retracts it in a way. Amy Sedaris isn't interested in praise unless she has fully earned it.
That fact takes me back to something I notice her do on set. As she was dancing along with the skeleton men, she has an idea pop up that she run by Dinello, who then attempts to work it into their already-formed plan. In the meantime, she stands behind a camera to take in the set, first from the monitors, and then over the lens with her naked eye. A voice in the distance calls out for Amy. She replies, "Walking!" but she doesn't move. She takes it in: the fine-tuned nuances that make a variety show like At Home on par with the legends that come before her.
Most people would leave that to the director of the prop master, but not Amy Sedaris. She’s positioned herself in a place where she can keep an eye on the set, because Amy Sedaris keeps an eye on everything.
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